'Fancy Calculating Machine': Computers and planning in independent India

In: Modern Asian studies, Band 52, Heft 2, S. 421-457

Abstract

AbstractIn the middle of the twentieth century, statistician P. C. Mahalanobis strove to haul India into the computer age. Convinced that these machines were integral to the future of economic planning in India, he and the Indian Statistical Institute mounted a campaign to bring India its first computers. In the years following independence, Mahalanobis and the Indian Statistical Institute acquired significant influence in the Indian planning process—culminating in them effectively authoring India's Second Five-Year Plan (1956–61). The tale of the computer's journey to India demonstrates that the decision to centrally plan independent India's economy, and the resultant explosion of official statistics, provided the justification for the pursuit of computers. They potentially solved what was considered centralized planning's greatest puzzle: big data. Mahalanobis persuaded the Indian government of the need to import computers for the purposes of development, and then negotiated the import of these exorbitantly expensive machines during visits to Europe, the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Needless to say, the question of which country would provide India its first computers would ruffle Cold War feathers. This article brings together and identifies a link between the research activities of the Indian Statistical Institute, its deepening association with economic planning and the installation of India's earliest computers.